BOSTON and ST. LOUIS, April 7—Omnicom agencies Brodeur Worldwide and Fleishman-Hillard both made significant additions to their Asia-Pacific operations this week, acquiring market leader InComm and its subsidiary IT Korea respectively in related deals.

Brodeur has taken a majority interest in Seoul’s InComm, an affiliate since 1997. The Korean firm, which employs more than 60 professionals focused on technology public relations, will become IncComm Brodeur. Its clients include Adobe Systems, Analog Devices, Borland, Cirrus Logic, Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, LSI Logic, and Nortel Networks.

Agency president John Brodeur says the technology business in Asia-Pacific is stronger than in the U.S. right now, and that he is bullish on the future of the market. “Most of our partners are either number one or number two in their markets in terms of technology PR,” he says. “We have offices in 12 markets, which gives us pretty good coverage. This deal signals the start of an effort to build a branded network. There will be other deals like this one.”

Fleishman-Hillard, meanwhile, will acquire a majority interest in IT Korea, which since 1997 has been operating as a subsidiary of InComm.
“For some time we had been looking to establish a presence in Korea, to complement our growing operations elsewhere in Asia,” says agency chairman John Graham. IT Korea serves clients including Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, iPlanet, and WatchGuard. It has a staff of about 12.